Quick update

I've been quiet as of late, but have been feverishly working on it most every night. Since I'm at the laborious process of prepping the trunk and interior for recaulking, undercoating or painting, there's not a lot of exciting new to update. I've been in the process of removing all the old seam sealer and caulk and will recaulk or reseal seams. Most of the time is spent going over every inch of the metal (whether it be interior or trunk) that I can access with a wire cup or sanding disc on a drill. The trunk is nearly ready for priming.

I removed the gas tank today which proved to be a near catastrophic feat. The nice thing is the gas tank merely sits right inside the trunk so it's an easy removal/install. The bad thing is the fuel line is rotting. Here's how the scenario was supposed to go (keeping in mind the tank is mostly full of gas): pull the fuel line of the sender unit and drain into bucket. Put the line back on the nipple when I needed to stop the flow to empty my bucket into a gas container. Repeat.

Here's how it actually went: pull fuel line off sender unit, line is rotted and literally disintegrates in my pliers. Fuel starts going into my bucket except now I have no way to stop the fuel flow, and I can only hope I have enough containers to store all the fuel. I alternate with a bucket and my oil drain pan underneath while emptying the other. I could not remove the fuel line fast enough between bucket fills to try to replace it with some new line I had laying around. Eventually I wisened up and pinched the end of some new fuel line shut with a vice grips, and would slip this over the sending unit nipple if I ran out of gas storage. I ended up draining about 9 gallons out before the fuel got to below the level of the sending unit outlet. I was then able to tilt it and finish the removal and keep it stored in that position. There's still another gallon or two inside.

In other sad news, while I originally thought the floor pans were good, after some sanding and brushing today, I can see little holes of daylight through the driver's floorpan, which means I'm adding another part to the list and another task to the welding queue.